The present invention generally relates to vehicle sensors and, more particularly, to automated systems and methods for capturing digital images during vehicle collisions.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there were 4,548,000 property-damage-only vehicle crashes reported in the United States in a recent year. The economic cost of motor vehicle crashes (police-reported and unreported) can total upwards of $277 billion, with property damage costs of $76.2 billion accounting for 28 percent of the total economic costs. Other countries have reported accident rates of one accident every four minutes, and have implemented social legislation in which a person who causes an vehicle accident has a duty to report this incident immediately to law enforcement as well as leave their information at the scene for the person who owns the property damaged in the accident if that person cannot be located.